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“Ugh!” Sam sat up then fell back onto the gurney. She closed her eyes again. “Someone please stop the room from spinning.”
“Sam!” She heard Michael shout, his voice like an air horn blasted in her ear. He scrambled to her, which meant he wasn’t tied up. In a moment, he was at her side. She tested her arms and legs, raising and lowering each slowly to keep her head and stomach settled. Neither met with resistance.
“Sam!” Hands groped her sleeve and jostled her. “You need to get up!”
White lights flashed under her lids. Sam forced herself to open them, squinted, then closed them again.
“Hurry!”
“I’m trying!” she snapped, her throbbing skull provoking a more venomous response than she’d intended. “It would be easier if you’d quit shaking me and stop yelling.”
“Sorry,” Michael said, barely a whisper. “But they’re coming back. You need to get up now. I need you. We’ve gotta do something.”
“Okay.” Sam forced herself up again then slid her feet off the bed. She stood up, her body shaking as if her blood sugar had taken a nosedive. She froze, vomit threatening to explode from her mouth, but she swallowed it down, its bitterness worse than sucking on a lemon. Her face puckered and she groaned, but struggling through the burning tang helped clear her head.
The sun coming through the skylight failed to illuminate the room, but even its meager rays stabbed like daggers into Sam’s brain. She squinted then snapped her fingers.
“The skylight,” she croaked, her voice sounding more like that of an eighty-year-old chain smoker than her own. “Maybe we can get out through there.”
She grabbed her gurney and half-rolled, half-slid it into the center of the room, pausing only once to keep from puking. With it directly under the skylight, Sam still wasn’t sure she could reach the potential exit. The room’s cathedral-like ceiling put it at least ten, maybe twelve, feet up.
“Hold it steady,” she told Michael as she climbed atop the gurney. He tried several grips on the rails before he had it. He tightened his grasp, planted his feet, and grit his teeth, his determined expression aggressive, almost savage.
Sam nodded as she rose from her knees to her feet, the gurney shifting and wheels squeaking as it trembled despite Michael’s efforts. The shaking, though slight, was enough to make her head reel and stomach churn all over again. Taking deep breaths, she reached for the latch securing the skylight, stretching out her arms and rising on her toes. “I... I can’t...”
She let out a sigh and slouched. “I could probably jump up and undo the latch, but I’m not sure if it’s a crank, or a push will open it... if it even opens in the first place.” She studied Michael, estimating his weight in her head. “Maybe if I lift you up, you could get it open.”
Michael raised his eyebrows and slowly removed his hands from the rails. “I’ll try.” But as he slid his knee onto the mattress, Sam heard voices talking outside. She thrust out her palm.
Michael’s gaze darted between her and the door. “What do we do?”
“Shhh!” She crouched on the gurney as if that would somehow make it easier to hear the approaching voices. She needed a moment to think. Maybe two with the way her head was spinning. If she had just a little more time, she was sure she could think of some way out of there. Only one idea came to mind, and she acted on it.
“Quick.” Sam jumped off the gurney. “Help me push this in front of the door.”
Together, Sam and Michael hurried to block the entrance, making it to the door and tipping the gurney on its side just as the viewing slot slid open and a pair of dark eyes peeked through. “Goooooood,” Wainwright’s smarmy voice said. “You’re both up. Step back, please.”
Sam bolted forward and jammed the railing underneath the door handle. She crossed her arms and stepped back, allowing herself a moment of satisfaction as she took in her makeshift barricade. Michael mimicked her, stepping back from the gurney. Wainwright would have had no trouble assessing their lack of weapons or defense from his vantage point.
He tried to open the door. The lever clanked against the gurney’s rail then returned to rest. When it moved again, it stayed pressed against the rail. The door pushed open in a smooth gait, the gurney sliding away with it.
Wainwright clicked his teeth as he stepped over the threshold. His doctor girlfriend followed.
Sam rushed him, fist raised. She threw a haymaker that would have leveled King Kong had it connected, but Wainwright effortlessly bobbed away from the blows with speed a man his age should not have had. He was faster than anyone she’d faced before. And her own movements felt slow, hampered by both intoxication and nausea.
She brought her arms back to guard her face, but before she could execute the series of punches she had in mind, the doctor, as strong as Wainwright was quick, kicked her in the side. Sam groaned and folded over the fresh injury. She’d instinctively deflected it with her elbow, but had the kick been a little higher, she would probably have suffered a few broken ribs. A ruptured kidney, though, didn’t seem much better.
Still, it was far from her first beatdown. She took in a breath and tried to stand tall, readying for her next offensive against two opponents. As she gritted her teeth and charged, Wainwright drew a pistol. Its nozzle indented her forehead before she could swing, stopping her in her tracks.
“Come now, Detective,” Wainwright said, his wry smile returning. “We’re all civilized here.” He laughed uproariously as if he’d made the world’s greatest joke then abruptly stopped.
“There’s nowhere to go, Samantha.” He lowered the gun to his side. “That’s a lovely name, Samantha. Do you mind if I call you that?”
Without waiting for a response, he continued. “Do you remember what you told me while you were under the good doctor’s spell?” He paced in front of Michael then back in front of her. “You said the boy here could tell the future.”
Sam stiffened. “I have no idea—”
“There’s no use denying it, Samantha. You said it. Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen, but if there’s one thing I know about my darling Mira’s serum, it’s that if you said it, you meant it.” He peered at Sam with calculating eyes.
Unable to talk herself out of what she might have said while under the influence, Sam said nothing.
“Hmm.” Wainwright scratched his chin. “Well, I believe you, and you believe you, but Mira here... she’s too hard on herself. She thinks perhaps her formula needs a little more tweaking, that maybe you were just too high to think straight.”
“She is the doctor here.” Sam scoffed. “That doesn’t make any sense to you?”
Wainwright frowned, and Sam took satisfaction in the small win. His dark, shining eyes, like oil spills aflame, lost some of their twinkle. “Well, your little disclosure is what’s keeping—” He jabbed his finger into Michael’s cheek with enough force to make Michael grimace. “—him alive.”
Sam let out a breath when Michael didn’t begin to seize at the touch. Wainwright, however, wasn’t done with the boy. He snarled and grabbed the front of Michael’s shirt. “Let me ask you, boy. Is it true? Can you see the future?”
Michael gaped at Sam, eyes widening.
“What are you looking at her for?” Wainwright sneered. “I’m asking you. What’s the matter? Don’t have the balls to speak for yourself?”
“I-I-I,” Michael sputtered, then faltered.
“Leave him alone!”
Wainwright let go of Michael’s shirt at Sam’s voice. “I’ve dabbled in the occult for many years, seen and done things that you wouldn’t even believe possible. So I have a uniquely open mind on the subject. But the people I collaborate with, they’ve engaged many so-called psychics, and none of them could even predict that I would kill them if they lied. So much for seeing the future.”
“It...” Michael’s gaze fell to the floor. In a low voice, he said, “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Oh, so the boy does speak!” Wainwright raised his arms to the ceiling as if in exaltation. “Tell me, then. What did you see when I touched you?”
Michael squinted, his face contorting as if he were in pain. “I saw you strangling her.” He turned to Sam. “I’m sorry, but it wasn’t here. It wasn’t now.”
“Ho!” Wainwright’s head cocked back, and he chuckled. “So all I have to do to prove you a fraud is to kill her right here and now?” He glanced over at the doctor. “What do you think, Mira?”
“You’d be losing a potentially valuable asset.” Dr. Horvat shook her head. “We would be losing one. She’d be an added layer of protection in allowing us to continue what we started here.”
Wainwright rolled his eyes. “Oh, we have plenty of layers for that. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
The doctor rested a hand on her hip. “One of us needs to remain pragmatic.”
“And that’s why I love—”
“All you’d be doing is changing the future,” Michael said softly, “which doesn’t prove anything.”
Wainwright leaned in closer to him. “What’s that?”
Michael met his stare, the corner of his upper lip twitching. “I said, that wouldn’t prove a fucking thing! People who know what’s going to happen can change it.”
Wainwright turned to Mira. “I like this kid. Did you know he swung at me with an ax?”
“You might have mentioned it—”
“A fucking ax! I’ve gotta say, that was a first, and I don’t think anyone else would have lived long enough to get a chance at a second try.” He shook his head. “Still, the language on someone so young.” Wainwright puckered his lips. “He’d be a more valuable asset if what he says is true, don’t you think? Any ideas on how to test it?”
Dr. Horvat stared up then scrunched up her nose. “I could put him under, and we can find out what predictions he made that came true. A little research should be able to verify what he says. Of course, that assumes my serum is working.”
“It’s working, honey!” Wainwright pecked her cheek. “Your serum is amazing, and you’re amazing!”
Dr. Horvat smiled and blushed. She coughed and straightened her lab coat when she caught Sam staring.
Wainwright tucked his gun in his pants then clapped. “All right. We’ll do that, then. We’ll keep Samantha alive until we know for sure, and if he’s lying, we’ll kill them both as gruesomely as possible.” He clapped again. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll send in a few squaws to help—”
A woman wearing a nurse’s uniform nearly stumbled through the open doorway. “The agent and the boy...” she said through heaving breaths, her mouth twisted with worry. “We can’t find them.”
“Really, Fran?” Wainwright dropped his hands and brushed his thighs, sighing loudly. “You had one job.”
The woman shrank back at his stern tone, but Sam thought she detected a hint of a smile on his lips.
“The Grand Chingon will not be pleased.” Wainwright said the words as if the Grand Chingon was part of some private joke. He shook his head and chuckled, somehow amused by the turn of events, a challenge presented in what to him seemed all some vile game.
He shrugged. “Well, nothing short of an army is probably on its way then. Time to exit stage left.”
“But my work...” Dr. Horvat crossed her arms and probably did what was as close to a pout an automaton like her could manufacture, looking instead as if she were sucking on a lime. “We’ve accomplished so much here.”
“We’ll find you a new lab and fresh lab rats tout suite, my dear.” Wainwright ogled Sam and Michael, his excitement exuding through his pores. A glistening near the corner of his mouth might have been drool. “But first, we have to take care of the supporting cast.” He drew a Mad Max-caliber blade from a sheath at his hip. The knife had teeth more jagged than a crocodile’s, with spikes jutting out of it at odd angles—crafted more to look savage than for any practical use. Sam wondered if it was anything like the sacrificial weapon he’d used to remove the hearts of his victims all those years ago, nothing more than a silly movie prop sharpened to work like the real thing.
Silly or savage, Wainwright’s intent for it remained the same. Sam raised her arms in front of her and hoped her training would come instinctively as she executed her defense.
A man, face covered in bandages, stepped behind the nurse as silently as a cat on the prowl. “Don’t move.”
The man pressed something into her back, and she yelped as she arched away from him. A red-headed boy in pajamas stood in the doorway behind him.
“Jimmy!” Michael shouted, his whole face shining with fresh hope.
Sam put an arm out to hold him at bay. The man appeared to be armed and had not made his intentions known. He wore sweats similar to Jimmy’s, so he may just have been another patient at Brentworth, but whose side he was on and how he’d gotten a weapon, Sam couldn’t know.
In a scratchy voice, louder and somehow familiar, he said. “Agent Matthew Pike, FBI. You’re all under arrest.” He slid what he held over the nurse’s shoulder—Sam knew a Glock when she saw one—and pointed it at Wainwright. “Anyone moves, and I shoot you first.”
Sam scrutinized the eyes behind the bandages, a cold metallic blue that reminded her of clear water on the verge of freezing. She knew those eyes, tried to remember where she’d seen them. Frank must have brought Agent Pike along on the Wainwright ride when he’d stolen her partner away from her. Perhaps that was the reason her mind was invoking images of Bruce.
The agent flexed and curled his fingers around the Glock’s grip. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this, Wainwright.” His index finger twitched over the trigger. His breaths came shorter, quicker. “There’s no way I’m letting you get away this time.”
“Shoot him!” Jimmy urged from the threshold. “Before it’s too late.”
The agent’s hand shook. His jaw worked back and forth underneath the bandages as if he were mulling over his next action. Sam knew some men who wore the badge would think themselves heroic for taking a shot at someone as evil as Wainwright, think they’d be doing the world a favor, and Sam wasn’t so sure she disagreed with that line of thought. But this man had a stronger moral code—Sam could see him caught between the hate in his words and eyes and the uncertainty and hesitation in his posture. The man who claimed to be FBI was suffering some deep, internal conflict.
Jimmy stepped forward, hand out. “Give me the gun. I’ll do it.”
For the first time, Wainwright’s face lost a bit of color, and his shit-eating grin fell away. However well he’d thought he had things under control, the killer had evidently not considered Jimmy. And Jimmy, poised and steady, looked like he could easily do what the agent could not.
“I said stay behind me, kid.” Agent Pike snarled. “I’m not like him. I can’t just... Anyway, he needs to answer some questions. The boy? The inside man?” His voice cracked as he shouted. “It’s over, Wainwright. No more games. Tell me everything!”
Wainwright’s hands rose. “I could, but I’m not sure you’d like the answers I have to give.”
Agent Pike roared and threw the nurse aside. He charged at Wainwright with the ferocity of a bear, clobbering the killer with the butt of his gun about the head, over and over again. Wainwright squealed, dropped his weapon, and crouched with arms up to shield the blows.
After ten or eleven strikes, the agent at last relented. Breaths heaved in and out of his chest, which pulsated like a heart. Wainwright had managed to fend off half the strikes with his forearms, but his hair was matted in places where the skin had split, and his right eye was swollen closed. With one hand planted on the floor and the other draped over his knee, he glanced up at his lover, raising his unbloodied eyebrow. “Well?”
“Oh, shit!” Jimmy hurried to Pike’s side.
Her voice calm and monotone, Dr. Horvat said, “Four little Indians up on a spree.”
The agent froze. The doctor’s words, nonsensical as they seemed, had stilled the bandaged-faced man right down to the tremor in his trigger finger. He stared blankly forward, Glock still raised as Jimmy chopped it from his hand. The gun spiraled and clattered onto the floor. Sam and Jimmy started for it, but the sound of a gunshot froze everyone in place. Sam whipped around to face the shooter.
Wainwright dropped his arms to his sides, knife hanging loosely in one hand, a freshly fired pistol in the other. His wicked grin had returned despite his injuries. “I could do this the easy way, or—” He pointed the gun at Sam, the agent, and finally Jimmy. “Who the fuck are you, kid?”
Jimmy said nothing. He slowly raised his hands.
Wainwright took a deep breath and tilted his head, wheels spinning. “It doesn’t matter, except now you’ve gotten yourself into something you probably wish you’d stayed out of. I was going to kill those two”—he pointed at Sam then Michael—“or use them then kill them just to further fuck with you and your bumbling FBI agent friend. But this? This is too good an opportunity to pass up! I couldn’t have asked for a more amusing scenario than what you’ve hand-fed me.”
He handed the gun to Dr. Horvat. “Honey, would you be so kind as to clean up the mess should our favorite Fall River detective fail? By now, good ol’ Frank’s gotta have the building surrounded. I’m going to make sure our escape route hasn’t been compromised.”
He hesitated as a boy called to dinner who wanted nothing more than to stay and play. “I do so hope he lives, though. Such a wonderful plaything he’s been! But lately, things have been just a little too easy. Perhaps it’s time to kill off some of the mice in the maze. Oh ho! Imagine his face when he realizes we made him kill his own partner?” He kissed the doctor’s cheek. “I’ll want details!”
Dr. Horvat scowled, the gun hanging from her limp-wristed grip as if she found its feel distasteful. As far as Sam could see, she was both the brains and the stability behind the duo, yet for some reason, she’d decided to play second fiddle in his mad opus and did as she was told.
“Fran,” he called, waving the nurse to his side. “You’re with me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Just as Fran stepped up to him, he jabbed his knife into her stomach. He twisted it as he pulled it back. The squelch it made as it slid out of her belly turned Sam’s stomach. Other than a slight umph, the nurse made no other sound. She slowly dropped to her knees, hands clutching the front of her uniform as blood seeped between her fingers. To Sam’s right, Michael gurgled, his face porcelain white.
“Just saving the Grand Poobah or whoever some effort.” Wainwright waved his hand flippantly. “Ah, who am I kidding? I just really needed to stab somebody.” He waggled his fingers, turning his back on the dying woman. “Ta-ta.”
As he exited, he shouted cheerfully, “Kill them, Bruce! Kill them all!”